Despair Quote by Sappho
““Girls, be good to these spirits of music and poetry that breast your threshold with their scented gifts. Lift the lyre, clear and sweet, they leave with you. As for me, this body is now so arthritic I cannot play, hardly even hold the instrument. Can you believe my white hair was once black? And oh, the soul grows heavy with the body. Complaining knee-joints creak at every move. To think I danced as delicate as a deer! Some gloomy poems came from these thoughts: useless: we are all born to lose life, and what is worse, girls, to lose youth. The legend of the goddess of the dawn I’m sure you know: how rosy Eos madly in love with gorgeous young Tithonus swept him like booty to her hiding-place but then forgot he would grow old and grey while she in despair pursued her immortal way.””
About This Quote
Source Poem: Fragmentary lyric, attributed to Sappho, 6th century BC
The speaker laments aging, loss of artistic ability, and the fleeting nature of youth, contrasting mortal decline with divine love that forgets mortality.
In simple terms: Aging steals skill and youth, while love may ignore time.
Key Takeaway
Embrace present creativity despite physical limits.
Themes
aging
art
mortality
love
divine
humanity
Mood
melancholic
reflective
Type
poetic
philosophical
When to use this quote
- personal reflection
- creative expression
- accepting physical decline
Key Concepts
ephemerality
nostalgia
transience
Questions to Reflect On
- How do you honor your art when the body fails?
- Can love transcend the inevitability of aging?
A Different Perspective
Aging can also bring wisdom and new forms of expression.
![“She [Carol Parsinan] somehow read my poems and came back to me and convinced me that I could be a poet, that I had the passion and the enthusiasm and the creativity to become a poet, but that what I was writing was not poetry because I was just expressing my feelings and I wasn't try to make…” quote by Edward Hirsch](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a3f/edward-hirsch-1614_carols_she-carol-parsinan-somehow-read-my-poems_3055277.jpg)
![“]Sardis often turning her thoughts here ] you like a goddess and in your song most of all she rejoiced. But now she is conspicuous among Lydian women as sometimes at sunset the rosyfingered moon surpasses all the stars. And her light stretches over salt sea equally and flowerdeep fields. And the…” quote by Sappho](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/cac/sappho-4562_beauty_sardis-often-turning-her-thoughts-here-y_45784.jpg)
